I’m sitting here listening to organ compositions whose writing dates span from the baroque all the way to some selections in pop (like the beginning of U2’s Where The Streets Have No Name), to jazz and blues works with the principal player playing electric organ (Herbie Hancock anybody?). It got me thinking about how the past two musical periods have lacked a significant amount of organ rep. This drought rivals the classical period in it’s ignorance of the instrument. For a sample of significant organ composers, take a look at what wikipedia has listed on it’s organ repertoire page:
As you can see if you were to place the points of birth of significant composers, the slope would be representative of the density of organ composers. The grey breaks in the graph presumably represent the different periods of music, with 1600-1750 being the Baroque, 1750-1800 Classical, 1800-1900 Romantic and 1900-2000 the modern and post-modern period. During the Baroque period the slope is nearly vertical with most significant composers writing for organ. When the classical period begins the slope becomes far less dramatic, organ music was all but forgotten. The romantics picked up the instrument up again, likely because of their own personal trend toward mysticism or religiosity and their desire to reflect that in their music.
Finally, in our clipped sample and short hindsight of the 20th century, we have three composers of significance writing for organ. Messaien is quite the totem of a composer to have writing for organ though. Messaien’s organ works might come to rival Bach’s Preludes and Fugues for Organ, or Liszt’s Fantasy on Ad nos, ad salutarem undam, but his significance would be an extreme outlier when comparing the significance of compositions by modern composers to those of the Romantic and Baroque periods.
Why did this happen? I believe that most of the fault (I use this word without negative connotations) lies in the secularization of classical music. Most all art music from the renaissance up to and even through the romantic period was primarily supported by christian churches, whether it be The Church, or Protestants. Since the organ is a church instrument, it would make sense that these composers, who had the instrument at their disposal, would use it in their works. This is why I believe Messaien also wrote great works for the organ, he was the organ-master at the Église de la Sainte-Trinité for over 60 years. Since most composers are now taught in an academic setting through the university these days, and there being a trend of western intellectuals being less religious, the organ has been mothballed by the art form.
This is quite sad, as I appreciate the tone colors of the organ, and I don’t believe the electric organ is an adequate replacement for the pipe organ in European-style art music. It has cropped up in pop music (as I cited in U2 before), but it seems to be more of a synthed up, computer creation used to evoke a feeling of reverence in the listener (that’s not necessarily a bad thing). This is opposed to a composition where only the organ’s color could evoke the feelings or ideas the composer intended.